My experiences as an IT professional - Anything that I write here is my personal opinion and should not be officially associated with any other entity

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Dell M5200N Printer Issue

Was getting an error generated by setpagedevice PS command when sending print jobs from Word or WordPerfect. User was trying to print an Avery label 2164 to a specific Dell M5200N workgroup laser printer outside her office, but the job wasn't going through.

I kept playing around with the printer and desktop, making sure that everything was as it should be and couldn't get it to work. Called Dell tech support and got no help there. The best the support person could do was recommend a system refresh...for an issue that was happening from multiple systems and multiple apps to the same printer for the same label size.

So I went back and tested printing to a different printer and it was working fine. Then went over the settings of the two printers with a fine tooth comb. Saw that paper size for Tray 1 on the offending device was set to Universal and Letter on the working printer. This paper size is set by the paper size set on the tray itself. Looked at the tray and sure enough the little plastic tab that determines paper size was off by one click.

Fixed the paper size tab and voila the problem went away.

Lesson to be learned from this? If a support tech doesn't give you a valid answer, have them transfer you up the chain or call another tech. Chances are if you are a decent IT person calling a level 1 tech at a company like Dell or HP and they tell you something that sounds bogus...it is.

Basically Dell's support is falling into the same mode as other large companies. Too many customers and not enough good techs, so you get shuffled to the level 1 call center people first who don't know much and are running off a general script.

In this business, so often it's not what you know or even your techniques that make you better, it's in getting the answers you need from others. Shows how dealing with people is so important for this business and it's certainly a skillset that I'm constantly working on.

Comments

Dell M5200N Printer Issue

Was getting an error generated by setpagedevice PS command when sending print jobs from Word or WordPerfect. User was trying to print an Avery label 2164 to a specific Dell M5200N workgroup laser printer outside her office, but the job wasn't going through.

I kept playing around with the printer and desktop, making sure that everything was as it should be and couldn't get it to work. Called Dell tech support and got no help there. The best the support person could do was recommend a system refresh...for an issue that was happening from multiple systems and multiple apps to the same printer for the same label size.

So I went back and tested printing to a different printer and it was working fine. Then went over the settings of the two printers with a fine tooth comb. Saw that paper size for Tray 1 on the offending device was set to Universal and Letter on the working printer. This paper size is set by the paper size set on the tray itself. Looked at the tray and sure enough the little plastic tab that determines paper size was off by one click.

Fixed the paper size tab and voila the problem went away.

Lesson to be learned from this? If a support tech doesn't give you a valid answer, have them transfer you up the chain or call another tech. Chances are if you are a decent IT person calling a level 1 tech at a company like Dell or HP and they tell you something that sounds bogus...it is.

Basically Dell's support is falling into the same mode as other large companies. Too many customers and not enough good techs, so you get shuffled to the level 1 call center people first who don't know much and are running off a general script.

In this business, so often it's not what you know or even your techniques that make you better, it's in getting the answers you need from others. Shows how dealing with people is so important for this business and it's certainly a skillset that I'm constantly working on.